Subject: File No. 4-637
From: William Gray

February 1, 2013

Dear Members of the Securities and Exchange Commission:

It's long past time to end secret political spending by corporations.

For that matter, it is outrageous that corporations are allowed the right of unlimited political spending, secret or public. I believe strongly that such spending has no place in a democracy, and it is doing serious damage to our political system.

So I strongly support the SEC issuing a rule in the near future that would require publicly traded corporations to publicly disclose all their spending on political activities.

Both shareholders and the public deserve to know how much a given corporation spends on politics (directly and through intermediaries), and which candidates are being promoted or attacked.

As long as corporations have the right to spend any amount of money supporting or attacking candidates, with zero accountability or transparency, the people will have a very difficult time making a rational choice of candidates, and our system will suffer from political gridlock.